Friday, February 26, 2016

Project Astoria , a developer bridge tool which allows developers to port Android apps to Windows (phone) has officially been canceled . The tool kit , announced along side Microsoft's Project islandwood (a tool to easily port iOS apps) at Microsoft's 2015 Build conference promised a quick and easy solution to address Windows Phone's app crisis . If it went into effect , Project Astoria would allow developers to re use some of the Android code and optimize it to run on Windows phone , currently Windows phone devices have around 500,000-700,000 apps and many prominent apps are still not available on the platform . Although the move would have address some of the apps to be re packaged , the lack of interest and the complexity in maintaining Project Astoria meant that it was a dead duck since its conception . Although project Astoria is now gone , Project islandwood is still set to continue , this tool would be focusing on a older version of Object C (Swift??) and it would allow iOS app developers to repackage current apps and distribute to the Microsoft store if need be .Although this tool is said to address the app issue to some extent , it will still be difficult to woo in developers who are probably more focused on making apps for the more popular iOS and Android operating systems .